The disclosed system and method relate to dynamic electronic mail (e-mail) content that have their final content determined or rendered after the sending of the e-mail or at the time of opening of the e-mail so that the content displayed therein is timely and more particularly to a system and method that renders live content which is being or has been tested by campaign optimization or effectiveness functionality such as offered by certain behavioral testing companies.
The systems, methods and graphical user interfaces disclosed herein may be envisioned as extending the functionality of the Dynamic Content Electronic Mail Marketing System and Method, disclosed in pending U.S. application Ser. No. 10/769,095, (published as U.S. Pub. No. 2004/0,215,479 A1), incorporated herein by this reference. Additionally, the disclosed systems and methods may be implemented in other systems and methods of providing dynamic content e-mail messages with live content.
Since the advent of e-mails and more particularly since the popularity of utilizing e-mails transferred over the internet has increased, advertisers and others have utilized the e-mail media to convey messages and advertising to potential customers. One problem with utilizing e-mail for conveying time sensitive information, such as, for example, notifying a potential customer of a one day sale, offering a coupon with and expiration date, advertising a limited inventory item or advising of similar time sensitive matters, is that there is no assurance that the e-mail will be opened by a time such that the information is not irrelevant. For example, an e-mail advertising a price on a limited inventory item which is opened after the entire inventory of the item is sold will not be timely.
E-mail marketers commonly know more than just the content of their messages. Frequently E-mail marketers know a considerable amount about demographics and other information regarding recipients of their messages. This demographic and other information may be utilized to prepare targeted e-mail messages for sending only to recipients believed to have an interest in the content contained therein. One key in e-mail marketing success is that the advertisements or other marketing materials that are delivered fit with the expectations or interests of the recipient. Especially when a recipient is a subscriber to a newsletter or to an e-mail marketer's program or system, e-mail marketers seek to avoid abusing the permission granted by, or failing to honor the privacy of, the subscriber, by avoiding providing the subscriber with irrelevant content.
One problem with e-mail advertisement is determining an appropriate pricing scheme for advertisements to be placed in e-mails. Advertisers who place advertisements on web pages are accustomed to pricing schemes which result in them being charged only when there is a possibility that the advertisement has been seen, such as when a user views a web page upon which the advertisement is placed, or when a user has taken some action indicative of a possible interest in the advertisement, such as clicking on a hyperlink in the advertisement displayed on the web page they are viewing. Thus, one common pricing scheme utilized to sell advertising space (inventory) on web pages is based on cost per thousand impressions of the advertising being sold (“CPM”). Typically, each view of a web page upon which the advertisement is displayed is considered an “impression” in such a pricing scheme. Another common pricing scheme for electronic advertising is to charge based on the number of interactions with an advertisement, such as charging for each click on a hyperlink associated with the advertisement, which is know as cost per click (“CPC”) pricing. In other words an advertiser purchasing advertising space on a web page may pay a given amount for 1000 web page views with their ad present on that page and even higher rates for cost per click CPC or 1000 clicks on their ad. Those skilled in the art will recognize that advertising pricing schemes may be based on more or fewer impressions than the above disclosed one thousand impressions or on more than each single click.
Marketers (sometimes referred to herein as advertisers) who place offers (which may include any marketing interaction such as advertisements, offers, coupons, surveys, images and other collateral) on webpages have long recognized that the manner in which the offer is presented or the audience to which the offer is presented affects the rate at which viewers respond favorably to the offer. The rate at which viewers of an offer act favorably toward the offer is often referred to as the conversion rate of the offer. One method of measuring conversion rates for offers on webpages is to determine the number of persons who interact with the offer, for example, by clicking on a hyperlink associated with the offer so that their browser is directed to a landing page associated with the offer. Campaign effectiveness functionality such as that offered by Behavioral targeting companies collects data regarding the conversion rate of offers and how that conversion rate is affected by variants or modifications of the offer or modification of the recipients to which the offer is presented.
When utilized with webpages, campaign effectiveness functionality serves to aid in designing multiple creative options of offers for the webpages and tracks offer impressions and their impact on conversion, optimizes offer content and compares multiple creative options and adjusts to serve more of the winning creative (i.e. that version of a multiple creative offer that renders the highest rate of conversion). Campaign effectiveness functionality tracks clicks to monitor offer performance in real time, from first click to final conversion, coordinates offer tests across multiple offer networks or publishers, tracks view-throughs and combines offer testing with cost and revenue tracking to quickly see real-time revenue for a given offer.
Campaign effectiveness functionality permits marketers to make their online content and offers more relevant to their customers to yield greater conversion. Campaign effectiveness functionality often provides an interface to a marketer for designing multiple creatives of an offer and for executing tests of the multiple creatives. Campaign effectiveness functionality also often offers an interface to the marketer for creating audience segments and targeting content. To engage an online audience, online marketers attempt to identify which offers and content are relevant and compelling to their audiences. Armed with this knowledge, marketers need the capability to continually evolve their sites and to target the appropriate content to different audiences.
Some campaign effectiveness functionality increases content relevance through segmentation, targeting and automated personalization of multiple creative offers.
Marketers using e-mail service providers (“ESPs”) are already placing ads in their e-mails today. Entertainment venues, online hotel inventory sellers, travel websites and many other companies whose core business is not advertising are selling ad space in e-mail messages sent to their consumers. Many customers and marketers would appreciate an improved way to monetize their e-mail program. E-mail is trackable and well known methods exist for determining when an e-mail message is delivered, when the e-mail message is opened and/or when some content within the e-mail message is interacted with by a recipient.
Traditionally, ESPs have fixed at the time of sending of e-mails the location of all images to be retrieved in targeted e-mails when they are opened. Thus, what the recipient will see when they open the e-mail message is determined at the time it is sent, not at the time it is opened. Utilizing this traditional method of creating targeted e-mails, if an e-mail message is opened multiple times the same advertising would be displayed each time it is opened, even if it is opened after some time limit for taking advantage of the advertising has expired. As mentioned above, advertising on web pages is sold via models where targeting techniques are used on every web page view or impression, to ensure that the most targeted and relevant ad is presented to the end user when viewing the web page. Also, the ads are traditionally sold based on cost per thousand (“CPM”) to drive the ad dollar spent by the advertiser. Currently, if an advertiser wants to place ads in an e-mail, they have difficulty selling advertising based on CPM impressions because a single e-mail may be opened multiple times.
Advertisers and others sending e-mails to recipients would appreciate a system and method wherein e-mail opens are treated like web page impressions, allowing the e-mail to retrieve the most targeted and relevant advertisement for the recipient. Images contained in the e-mail message can be rendered at the time of open, allowing an ad-server, which may be an in-house ad server of the targeted e-mail server or a third party ad server, to treat e-mail inventory with the same logic that drives online advertising on webpages.
Advertisers and others sending e-mails to recipients would appreciate the ability to send e-mail messages that, no matter when the e-mail messages are opened, contain timely content.
Marketers and others engaging in e-mail campaigns would appreciate the ability to present live content in e-mails sent to their subscribers that has been or is being tested for its effectiveness.
The disclosed e-mail live content (which may include without limitation advertisements and coupons) behaves similar to content on a website. In other words the content can rotate at the time of opening of an e-mail message, much like the content on website rotates with each impression. This would allow a business to sell ads in e-mail in the standard “cost per thousand” impressions (“CPM”) or “cost per click” (“CPC”) models or other common pricing schemes utilized for selling advertisement presented by web pages.
According to one aspect of the disclosure, a system for introducing behaviorally tested live content into an electronic mail message comprising at least one dynamic live content area sent through an e-mail service provider system comprises memory and a click manager. The memory includes behaviorally tested live content comprising image data. The click manager receives an indication of the opening of the message by a recipient, whereupon the click manager accesses the memory to retrieve behaviorally tested live content and send the retrieved behaviorally tested live content for rendering in the dynamic live content area of the e-mail message opened by the one of the plurality of recipients.
According to another aspect of the disclosure, a system for generating an e-mail message containing live dynamic content wherein the e-mail message is created on a first remote device and includes at least one dynamic live content area configured to receive behaviorally tested live content to be received from memory wherein behaviorally tested live content image data is stored includes an e-mail provider system including a server and an e-mail engine. The server is communicatively coupled to the first remote device and the e-mail engine is communicatively coupled to the memory. The e-mail provider system is programmed and configured to: identify a plurality of recipients, each of the plurality of recipients having at least one attribute associated therewith; send the e-mail message to the plurality of recipients; associate at least one of the at least one attribute with the dynamic live content area; determine that a sent e-mail has been opened by one of the plurality of recipients; and, upon determining that an e-mail message has been opened by one of the plurality of recipients, access the memory to retrieve behaviorally tested live content and send the retrieved behaviorally tested live content for rendering in the dynamic live content area of the e-mail message opened by the one of the plurality of recipients.
According to yet another aspect of the disclosure, a method for sending to a recipient an electronic mail message presenting behaviorally tested live content comprises providing a system for enabling the creation of and for sending the electronic message, the system comprising an outbound e-mail manager, and a click manager; receiving a call for behaviorally tested live content from the electronic mail message at the click manager when the electronic message is opened by the recipient and delivering to the electronic mail message behaviorally tested live content.
Additional features and advantages of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon consideration of the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment exemplifying the best mode of carrying out the invention as presently perceived.